The Verge: "ModernMix aims to change this. The app provides options to simple run Windows 8-style apps in separate individual windows in desktop mode. Windows 8 still has the usual Aero Snap functionality to align traditional apps side-by-side, and ModernMix takes full advantage of this. ModernMix remembers app window sizes so that they launch in the same place every time. A little widget in the top right-hand corner of Windows 8-style apps lets you bring them into desktop mode, and if you re-launch them from the Start Screen it will remember where you left off." Stardock - making awesome stuff since OS/2.

I just tried this. It doesn't work too well. A lot of apps scale slowly and are not written to take advantage of the variable resolutions -- so nearly every one breaks or displays a scroll bar.

It's not really fun trying to pan around an app in Desktop mode. If you try to just run it maximized in a Window then you lose a bunch of pixels due to the taskbar being there (if they follow Metro UI guidelines and pad the bottom of the scrollable area with 20px, its even worse since it'll cut off content indiscriminately).

I think I used to be more skeptical of the idea before this though -- I changed my mind, it'd be cool if official support for this idea came from Microsoft along with the associated framework and app vendor fixes to resize more smoothly.

tbh, I was positively surprised by how well the apps did resize, though my expectations were very low (considering that all the apps were designed for a 1024x768 minimum resolution). I guess since the WWA/XAML frameworks and controls are designed to adaptively scale, the apps get a fair amount of sensible resizing behavior for free even when not designed or tested for it. Though obviously there are some glitches and brokenness here and there.

As for whether something like this should be officially supported, why not just leave it up to developers whether their particular app supports it or not? Then devs who don't want to worry about supporting resolutions under 1024x768 still don't have to (and the UI control to change modes won't appear), and devs who think their userbase includes a lot of people interested in using the app on the desktop can do the work to support it properly. Additionally if apps know whether they're running on the desktop or not they can make some appropriate modifications to their UI - e.g. it's silly having both window chrome with a title that says "Store" and a giant header that says "Store" (well, tbh I think it's silly having a giant header that says "Store" even when the store is running fullscreen, but it's doubly silly on the desktop).